"Dedwarmo wrote: "Sounds like an interesting book to me." Yeah, maybe. Please let me know what you think."
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"you too man, best of luck for your walk/ride next year!"
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Remember the book by Nathan Hoturoa Gray that I thought sucked so much? Well this one is about a part of the same trip, only it’s written from his girlfriend’s perspective:
Author: Polly Greeks
Title: Embracing the Dragon
Time: 2002
Destination: Gre...moreRemember the book by Nathan Hoturoa Gray that I thought sucked so much? Well this one is about a part of the same trip, only it’s written from his girlfriend’s perspective:
Author: Polly Greeks
Title: Embracing the Dragon
Time: 2002
Destination: Great Wall of China
Length: a few months
Type: mostly hiking
Rating: 5/10
The girlfriend
The story: In 2001, PG is working as a journalist in New Zealand. She does and interview with Gray (who at the time is trying to walk the length of the Great Wall), falls in love with him and decides to tag along. They walk together for a few hundred kilometers, share the hardships and the joy, and eventually they make a decision on their relationship.
I thought it was funny that Gray’s account of the whole ordeal was just so horrible, while this one wasn’t that bad. Okay, PG doesn’t have a clue about China (like Gray), but she seems to have a broader perspective than him. And by broader perspective I mean that she doesn’t just talk about her esoteric findings all the time. There is the story of a relationship to tell here, and a strange country that is worth to explore, and PG tries her best to do that. In fact, just when she is taking her time to give us a few details about the people she meets (like the rich guy who takes them in on his country estate), her writing is really at its best.
So why is this only a 5/10 then? Well, the book could have used some more polishing. I would have particularly liked to get rid of Gray’s bullshit (“‘The Chinese can tell what you’re thinking. They’ll respond accordingly,’ Nathan told me.” p.45), and some of the factual errors were a bit unsettling (“It’s hard to believe that there’s just one official time zone for the whole of China. It’s just too big. It must surely be sunset in Eastern Kashgar while people to the far west are just preparing lunch.” p.189)
But it wasn’t a bad read after all.
A 5/10.(less)
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Here is someone who greatly inspired both Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky and Sven Hedin:
Author: Régis Evariste Huc
Title: Travels in Tartary, Tibet and China
Time: 1844-1864
Destination: Northern China to Lhasa
Length: 2 years
Type: by caravan
...moreHere is someone who greatly inspired both Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky and Sven Hedin:
Author: Régis Evariste Huc
Title: Travels in Tartary, Tibet and China
Time: 1844-1864
Destination: Northern China to Lhasa
Length: 2 years
Type: by caravan
Rating: 7/10
An adventure sometimes
The story: REH is a French missionary in China during the first half of the 19th century, during a time when many parts of the country are off-limits to foreigners and tensions between the British Empire and China are just about to boil over. This doesn’t keep REH from wanting to explore some of the least accessible areas of the country though, so he rounds up his colleague Joseph Gabet in order to undertake a long trek to Lhasa.
The journey takes them almost two years, requires them to dress up as Lamas and learn several languages and dialects, and it almost kills them, but they eventually make it there. And this book tells their tale.
My reading experience was a bit mixed. While REH can be quite witty and straight-forward, keeping his storytelling short and interesting, I didn’t really enjoy some of the parts where he seems to be exposing his views on religion or on the general population. Of course this is probably due to his time and background, but it still gets a bit annoying sometimes.
Anyway, the part where they had to cross the high plateau during winter was grade A adventure story material, and REH told it well.
Overall, an interesting insight into Northern China during the latter part of the Qing-Dynasty, and a good adventure story at times.
7/10(less)
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Wolfgang Büscher
October 26th, 2011
Here’s a highly acclaimed piece of travel writing from Germany:
Author: Wolfgang Büscher
Title: Berlin – Moskau
[Title:] [Berlin - Moscow]
Time: 2001
Destination: Germany to Russia
Length: 3 months
Type: mostly ...moreWolfgang Büscher
October 26th, 2011
Here’s a highly acclaimed piece of travel writing from Germany:
Author: Wolfgang Büscher
Title: Berlin – Moskau
[Title:] [Berlin - Moscow]
Time: 2001
Destination: Germany to Russia
Length: 3 months
Type: mostly walking
Rating: 7/10
The weight
The story: WB is a journalist who has a thing for walking, so it seems rather natural that he would decide to venture into Eastern Europe on foot. He starts in Berlin and walks through Poland, Belarus and eventually to Moscow. Not 100% of this is done on foot though, as he apparently does some hitchhiking on the way.
The book is quite interesting. It is written in a style that feels at times like a journalistic essay and at other times like an ornate novel. WB knows how to write, and it hardly gets boring.
That being said, I found this book to be surprisingly heavy. It seemed like WB was constantly looking for the deep and the tragic, and sometimes (only sometimes) his writing even reminded me a bit of that of a certain Werner Herzog. Of course it was a lot better than that, but I still would have liked it to be a bit lighter.
Anyway, I thought it was a good book.
7/10(less)
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I didn't finish it. Not because it's difficult or long but because it's just pap. Cover-to-cover pap. Hackneyed tripe. Air-inflated mysteriousness and banal oblique sentences with zero depth. It's like Casteneda without characters; Chaucer without su...
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After having read William Lindesay‘s excellent account of his trek along the Great Wall, I was excited to get my hands on this one:
Author: Nathan Hoturoa Gray
Title: First pass under Heaven
Time: 2000-2002
Destination: The Great Wall
Length: 2 year...moreAfter having read William Lindesay‘s excellent account of his trek along the Great Wall, I was excited to get my hands on this one:
Author: Nathan Hoturoa Gray
Title: First pass under Heaven
Time: 2000-2002
Destination: The Great Wall
Length: 2 years (interrupted)
Type: mostly walking
Rating: 1/10
a fan of the lump
The story: 5 dudes decide to walk the Great Wall. Their main objective: to be the First Westerners. Okay, so this is about 15 years after William Lindesay, and almost a century after William Edgar Geil, but whatever.
NHG, a New Zealander, is one of the five who start out at Jiayuguan (嘉峪关) and make their way east. They get separated. Some keep walking, while others don’t. They mostly stay with families in the countryside, whom they seem to approach like solicitors. NHG witnesses a homicide, gets arrested by the military, returns to New Zealand, travels to India and finds a female companion. He eventually finishes the journey two years after he started.
But alas! This book is wrong on so many levels (and I am not even going to talk about the rhyming poems).
There’s just too much condescension:
“Our presence, however, seems to have the opposite effect on the Chinese, in particular the way they wistfully look upon our modern backpacks, cameras and watches. As they say in science, you can’t measure something without altering it. I only hope our Western presence won’t transform them too much, especially towards a hoarding mindset or one that is fearful of losing one’s material accumulations.” (p.61)
…ignorance:
“It has been hellishly lonely walking those last three days into Zhangjiakou, paranoid that I will be overpowered by villagers.” (p.189)
…and esoteric bla:
“…a gigantic Buddha statue. It is sitting in the lotus position, etched out of a mountain rock. I approach the structure as a strong gust of wind blows into my face. Suddenly, I feel an unseen presence leap into my body. ‘Ohhhh…fuck,’ I moan, shaking my body, violently trying to rid myself of the possession.” (p.259)
I was just shocked by it all, especially since the writing wasn’t all that bad, but eventually it made perfect sense, when on page 260, NHG tells us:
“I wake up, shocked, and pick up The Pilgrimage, a book by Paolo Coelho, which accompanies me on my road.”
Yikes!
A 1/10, because it was still not as bad as Coelho.(less)
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I really hated this book. In fact, it is the second worst book I've ever read (first being the Voyage of Somebody the Sailor). The story made no sense, and key parts of it were left unexplained (what is RAM? what is The Tradition?). I suppose you mig...
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Thank God I didn’t buy this one:
Author: Werner Herzog
Title: Of walking in ice
Time: 1974
Destination:
Munich to Paris
Length: 26 days
Type: walking
Rating: 1/10
Mournful burglar (stick to thy last)
First things first: WH is a director of New ...moreThank God I didn’t buy this one:
Author: Werner Herzog
Title: Of walking in ice
Time: 1974
Destination:
Munich to Paris
Length: 26 days
Type: walking
Rating: 1/10
Mournful burglar (stick to thy last)
First things first: WH is a director of New German Cinema and a very good photographer – if you happen to get your hands on a book with his photographic works, make sure to check it out. Another thing about WH that I find remarkable is how he ate one of his shoes once. I guess it’s not so much about the eating part, but rather the fact that he didn’t back down from a lost bet. Cool.
So far so good?
Not good. This book was horrible. Here’s the basic idea: In the fall of 1974, WH hears about the French-German film critic Lotte Eisner being seriously ill in her home in Paris. He decides to walk from Munich all the way to Paris, thinking that this heroic act might save the old lady.
So he walks. And he rambles. The book is about these ramblings, and it is so slow and painful that every page feels like another blister.
I have two questions for the author:
1) Why is the overall atmosphere so grim? Sure, rain and snow have the potential to suck when you’re walking against the wind, but who wants to read 100 pages of depressive blatherings? Here’s a gem from a random page I just opened: “All this is pointless beyond description. Just let them find me sleeping here in this bed, those retarded bricklayers. How the wind is routing the forest outside.” – Jeez… and this is after WH forced his way into an empty house by smashing a window.
That’s another thing:
2) What’s with all the breaking into buildings? It seem like WH is burgling every other home between Bayern and Île de France, leaving a swath of destruction behind him. I just don’t understand why that should be necessary. At one point he apparently even takes a leak into someone else’s boots…
Now please don’t get me wrong: I understand that a reader doesn’t necessarily have to feel sympathy for an author in order to like a certain pice of writing. And I also acknowledge the fact that travel literature doesn’t have to be 100% truthful. But I just can’t help but dislike this book.
Let me put it this way: If walking is a glass, then WH has just poured all the joy out of it and filled it up with a mix of depression, egotism and “meaningfulness” that I find just way too repulsive to recommend drinking.
The reason why I am not giving this one a zero rating like Paulo Coelho is because I think that WH isn’t as pretentious as him. In fact, he might not be pretentious at all. Maybe he was just in a state of depression during that winter of 1974, and he decided to write it down for all of us to share.
A sad 1 out of 10 is what it is.
Ugh.(less)
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